Contents

Specification

Surprise was 126 feet (38 metres) long on the gun-deck and 31 feet (9.45 metres) in beam; she was rated at just under 579 tons (589.5 tonnes). She is usually described as a 28-gun ship, but this was a somewhat artificial reckoning to distinguish her from an unrated post ship on the one hand (such vessels might carry up to 26 guns) and from a 32-gun frigate on the other. In fact her main deck was pierced for 24 guns, while the quarter deck carried a further eight to twelve and her forecastle between two and six, all these being of smaller calibre. The guns on the main deck were either nine-pounder long guns or 32-pounder carronades.

Surprise is usually said to have been equipped with an abnormally tall mainmast, designed for a 36-gun frigate, and POB accepts this. However, recent research by Brian Lavery [1] suggests that this may have been at most a short-lived experiment on the part of Captain Hamilton (see below). By contrast, a letter written by Hamilton in May 1798 instructs the dockyard to remove the mainmast and set up the existing foremast (which would have been shorter) in its place, on the grounds that this would make the ship more 'stiff' or stable; and the record (also cited by Lavery) of the ship's fittings at the time of sale in 1802 seems consistent with this, all the spars being appropriate to a 24- or even 20-gun ship. [2]. She was established for a crew of between 200 and 240.

By the standards of the 1790s Surprise was decidedly on the small side for a frigate; many such ships were over 150 feet long and were reckoned at 1000 tons or more. Nonetheless, she briefly enjoyed the status of a fifth rate ship before reverting to the sixth rate.

Surprise in history

Surprise began her life in 1794 as the French corvette L'Unité, designed by Pierre-Alexandre-Laurent Forfait who was at one time Minister of Marine under Napoleon. Captured by HMS Inconstant in April 1796, she was renamed (since the Royal Navy already possessed a ship called Unité, taken just a week previously) and served for six years, mostly in the Caribbean. In 1801 her penultimate captain, Christopher Laroche, reported that she sailed well before the wind but made a great deal of leeway when close-hauled - a contrast to her performance in the Canon. She was by then in poor condition and was sent home as escort to a convoy, to end her naval career as an observation-vessel off the Dutch coast. Nothing is known of her fate after she was sold out of the Service in February 1802.

Her most distinguished action dates from October 1799, when she was commanded by Captain Sir Edward Hamilton. The crew of the frigate HMS Hermione had mutinied under great provocation, murdered their officers and handed their ship over to the Spanish, who had her moored under very strong guard at Puerto Cabello on the Spanish American coast. Nonetheless, boats from Surprise succeeded in cutting out Hermione and restoring her to the King's service.

Surprise in the Canon

O'Brian's Surprise retains the French origin and name, the specification and the history of the real ship, but he has greatly extended her lifespan in both directions. In HMS Surprise we are told that Jack had served on board her when he was a midshipman - that is to say before 1792, since his commission as lieutenant dates from that year. As the war against the French Republic did not break out until 1793, it follows that the capture of Surprise must have taken place in the last previous period of hostilities between Britain and France, namely the war of American independence, which came to an end in 1783. Thus the fictional Surprise is at least eleven years older than her prototype. At the other extreme, O'Brian's Surprise is still at sea in 1817. O'Brian also raises her principal armament (when she is carrying long guns) from 9-pounders to 12-pounders; he postulates several major refits (the last in Blue at the Mizzen) to account for her ability to cope with the stress of this and of her exceptionally eventful service.

Ship's Schedule

The daily routine for the crew left it to the morning watch -- 0400-0800 -- "to show the sun a spotless deck". Aubrey himself typically rose at 0600, and the hands were piped to dinner at "eight bells in the forenoon watch" -- 1200, noon -- after the "officers fixed the height of the noonday sun".[3]

Specifications in the Canon

Surprise displaced "less than six hundred tons"[4] and her best bower weighed thirty-one hundredweight, or 3,472lbs.[5]

Among her idiosyncratic features, Surprise shipped a spritsail course, "an odd, rather old-fashioned sail, slung under the bowsprit and masking the chasers".[6]

Although she carried numerous different armament in her time, during the latter part of the Aubreyad's extended 1813, Surprise "carried twenty-two twelve-pounders [ long guns ] on her maindeck and two beautiful brass long nines...."[7] one of these called Beelzebub[8] "...She possessed six twenty-four-pounder carronades, but since they tended to oppress her in heavy seas they were often struck down into the hold".[9] Of these guns, the names of the starboard -- even numbered from two through twenty-four -- included Wilful Murder (number 4)[10], Towser (number 6), Jumping Billy (number 22), True Blue (number 24), Viper, Mad Anthony, Bulldog, and Nancy's Fancy[11], as well as Belcher, Sudden Death, Tom Crib[12], Fumping Billy[13], Nancy Dawson, Revenge, and Spitfire, the latter shipped adjacent to Sudden Death.[14] The carronades were "only a third the weight of the Surprise's regular twelve-pounder cannon but fir[ed] a ball twice as heavy; furthermore they could be fought by a much smaller crew -- two zealous hands at a pinch, as opposed to the seven or eight gathered round a long twelve. On the other hand, they could not fire their heavy ball very far nor very accurately".[15] Aubrey is frequently mentioned to have preferred using slow-match to the more modern and, to his mind, less reliable flint locks in the earlier portion of the canon, but later reflect with pride on "the brilliant flint-locks that now...adorned Surprises guns, doing away with those potential misfires when the linstock [sic] wavered over the touch hole or was doused by flying spray."[16]

The gunroom was "a long dim corridor-like room, some eighteen feet wide and twenty-eight in length, with an almost equally long table running down the middle and the officers' cabin doors opening on to the narrow space on either side -- opening outwards, since if they opened the other way they must necessarily crush the man within." The mizzen-mast ran through it to the keelson below.[17]

References

↑ The mainmast was then 71ft and the foremast 66ft. By contrast, the table in Burney, New Universal Dictionary of the Marine (1815: article 'Mast') gives the lower mainmast of a 28-gun ship as 81ft tall as against 89ft for a 36 and 71ft for a 20. Geoff Hunt (The Marine Art of Geoff Hunt [Conway Maritime, 2004], p.114) adopts the 89ft figure; he reckons the overall height of the main-topgallant truck as 146ft.

External Links

Bruce Trinque's HMS Surprise web pages, containing a wealth of technical and historical information (partly drawn from Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail 1793-1817 (2005)), along with plans and sections.